The Empire Strides Back

Sunday, 3pm: the weather's turned a very chilly corner, the sky's getting dark around the same time you sit down for your Sunday lunch, and the John Lewis Xmas ad isn't even out yet. Rubbish. Terrible time to go running, right? Sounds like a weird way to spend your afternoon, right? WRONG. DEAD WRONG. LIES. FALSE NEWS.

Jim, Lucy and Katie (and later Chi) said rubbish to that and turned up to Tooting track anyway, to do some running and make sure coach George wasn't just shouting at an empty field. A warmup included some stride-based technique drills, involving:

HOPPING! EXAGGERATING! and SPRINTING!

Then it was time to crack on with the main course of the set, 6 reps of 'depletion efforts': the first half run at a really FAST pace before the second half was run at a more CONTROLLED pace, with a focus on truly excellent form throughout. This is a great way to simulate maintaining form when you're cream crackered toward the end of the race, and was really exciting to everyone (but probably more so to George who just had to stand there and shout and occasionally do maths). A nice gentle warmdown and some stretching was followed by the pub, where everyone agreed that the session was super fun (even if their faces at the time said otherwise) and they would definitely do it again. Top banana.